To start off; I experienced my first official bid day since joining the office at the beginning of May. The project we were bidding on was the restoration of Parkdale Pumping Station located in Toronto. This project happened to be the first one that I began estimating on upon arriving at Alberici.

During the week leading up to bid day the estimating team along with upper management worked together on preparing the framework and strategy for the bid. When bid day arrived, prices from subcontractors began flowing in and this continued throughout the morning with some prices coming in with less than 15 minutes to go before bid submission! Throughout the morning the team worked together to finalize the bid; it was awesome to see the team working so well together in a situation where time is not on your side. Time seemed to just fly by; one moment I was having my morning coffee, the next I was waiting in the bid room with the rest of the team for the results!........ WE DID IT! We had successfully beat the competition. I’d have to say that it was a pretty surreal feeling having a project that the team had worked hard on over the past month become a success.

Unfortunately, the next bid day was not as successful as we ended up finishing second place on a building renovation project. “You win some, you lose some” is the phrase which pops into mind. However, a positive takeaway from this experience was how the team reacted to the loss, which was the mindset of “let’s get the next one”.

Once again over these past two weeks I had the opportunity to attend a couple pre-bid meetings. One of the pre-bid meetings was quite an experience as it lasted 3.5 hours, taking the group through tunnels and various buildings at a wastewater treatment plant.

Every day continues to bring about new experiences. I’m looking forward to next week and hopefully another win on bid day.